Former Navy SEAL turns to treatment after survivor’s guilt and PTSD from a failed Afghan mission led to substance abuse, legal trouble

Young faces from the post-Sept. 11 generation of veterans are still fairly rare there.

By the time Nathan arrived, hundreds of people were waiting along Park Boulevard, their belongings bundled in tarps and stacked in shopping carts.

The former SEAL remembers it was hard to step out of the car. His mother said she worried he would skulk off after she drove away.

“I didn’t know anything about Stand Down,” Nathan said. “I was just told to show up at this address on this date. And I showed up and it was just like, ‘Oh, man. There’s a thousand bums, and I’m one of them.’”

Life in treatment has been an about-face for the former petty officer second class. No more Jameson. No more sullen silences.

Until last week, he lived in a dorm room with three other guys at Veterans Village. His world consisted of two metal bunks and a shared bathroom.

In one class, they read aloud from an Alcoholics Anonymous book. They discussed spirituality in another hourlong session. Nathan fidgeted in class. Sitting still isn’t natural for him.

But getting numb can’t be the answer anymore. Nathan believes that PTSD means he can never touch alcohol again.

“If I do, I’m going to kill somebody or kill myself. People think they can, but they can’t. It’s a tough pill to swallow. I didn’t want to swallow it at 22,” he said.

“The party’s over, and it’s time to grow up. It’s time to be a man,” he said. “I’m a former frickin’ Navy SEAL. I’m supposed to be working in the White House right now. And I’m living here. I don’t say it like that; this place saved my life. But look where I’m living. I’m a homeless veteran.”

Nathan also believes that he never would have become an alcoholic if he hadn’t witnessed combat, hadn’t seen his buddies dead. There would have been nothing to numb, he said.

It possibly didn’t have to go this way.

Nathan went to the La Jolla VA to file his paperwork upon discharge from the Navy in 2007. He sat in a room with VA doctors for an assessment. They heard about his drinking. They saw from his records where he had been.

They wanted to admit him then for PTSD treatment, according to Nathan’s memory of the meeting. But he wasn’t having it. He was still in tough-guy mode, learned from years of the-only-easy-day-was-yesterday military culture.

“I said, ‘Thank you very much. It’s been very nice. I’ll get back to you guys on Monday.’ And I didn’t call them for five years,” he said. “Now, looking back, that would have been an awesome plan.”

His mother said doctors called the house, trying to convince him. Nathan was in denial. But his mother admits that the family played a role, too.

“Part of it was us. We said, ‘Oh, you can’t say you have post-traumatic. You’ll never get a decent job,’” she said.

Nathan thinks combat vets, in particular those from special operations, should get at least three months to decompress before returning to normal American life. He calls the idea a “retreat,” where service members take classes on the interaction of PTSD and drugs or alcohol and tackle their VA paperwork.